Post navigation

The Doctor’s Companion Ep. 109 – Prehistoric Cargo

The Doctor is riding a triceratops but Scott and Matt are less than thrilled with the Matt Smith episode “Dinosaurs on a Spaceship”.

The Doctor teams up with Amy, Rory, Rory’s Dad, an ancient Egyptian Queen, and a 20th century game hunter to investigate a spaceship hurtling towards Earth. Why is the spaceship filled with Dinosaurs? What is their connection to Silurians? Does Rory’s Dad, Brian, have any purpose in this story at all? Find out in the newest episode of The Doctor’s Companion! And remember, BEWARE OF SPOILERS!!

This is definitely an episode for some people. People who are still really into this vision of Doctor Who. I am not those people. I’m over Moffat’s vision of the show and ready for a new take. I’m glad this exists for the people who like it, I’m just not one of them.

I think there are two reasons I liked the episode so much. One, I really like dinosaurs, so I am predisposed to like almost anything with dinosaurs in it. That’s not to say I like everything with dinosaurs. I absolutely hate The Lost World, for example.

The second reason that I think contributed to me liking this episode is that I went into it cold. Apart from the small preview at the end of last week’s episode, I knew nothing about Dinosaurs on a Spaceship. It’ll be the same for the next few episodes as well. I haven’t read any interviews. I haven’t seen anything to hype me up more than “oh look Doctor Who is airing again!” I think that not building it up beforehand might helped it play out better for me than if I had read up on it as much as you guys seemed to have done.

That said, you helped me out for next week’s episode. I thought the short preview of it looked kind of okay-ish at best, but now that I know it was written by Toby Whithouse, I am looking forward to it more.

I was gonna leave a post about how I don’t know much about the season and then I thought about it and realized I do. So there’s that. But mostly it’s just about the creative team behind the episodes, not the premises, trailers, or clips the BBC releases. I’ve even stopped reading interviews.

That said, I did go into the Dinosaurs on a Spaceship story with lowered expectations (because of the Chibnall and because I was certain it wouldn’t have much more than the premise) and it still disappointed me.

I actually liked Amy more than I have in awhile because she actually seemed to be displaying a real personality besides being Steven Moffat’s standard “strong woman.” For example being in hero worship with Nefertiti implying that as a kid she had an interest in history. Now that you guys point out to me that she was just “being the Doctor” yeah I can see it and damn. I guess I can just give up any hope that Amy Pond’s ever going to become a fully developed character.

About seeing Rory’s dad I had thought that maybe the reason he was there was because the writer’s finally realized that unlike any of the other primary companions starting with Rose to Donna we’d never really met any of their family members. Of course we can’t meet Amy’s parents the ones who were eaten by the crack and we actually have some kind of history with when we can have fun with Rory’s dad….because. I’m just saying having Amy’s mom or dad there could have filled the same plot point but would have made the episode a lot more interesting for me.

I also want to give you you guys credit for ALWAYS giving these episodes the criticism it deserves. I know you guys are huge fans and it probably hurts for you guys to point out this stuff but to me it just proves how much this show means to you and what high standards you guys have. There seems to be a lot of people who feel like you aren’t allowed to criticize this show and still call yourself a fan. That being a fan somehow means blind worship and ignoring the icky or the uncomfortable or the problematic (Moffat himself seems to feel that way) but not you guys and THANK YOU for that. You know what? I’m going to go and write you guys a positive review on Amazon right now 🙂

That’s probably the most encouraging thing you could say as far as I’m concerned. Since last season I’ve been more and more aware how hard I come down on these stories and how much my distaste hits me, but (as you say) it’s really because I love the show so much and because I demand so much from it. Do I demand too much? Maybe? But it really doesn’t take much for me to like Doctor Who. It doesn’t. It just has to tickle my fancies. Moffat, for my money, doesn’t. Davies, on the other hand, did. He did the show for four years and it came out like clockwork and the quality was MUCH more consistent than it has been during Moffat.

The truth is I HATE being contrarian and/or overly critical, but it really is how I react to the show nowadays. I can’t do a podcast about something and say anything except for what’s on my mind. It’d be disingenuous in a way I don’t want to be. God knows I WANT to love the Moffat era, and if I’d been podcasting during series five you woulda seen me gushing about the vast majority of it. Now, though, it’d make me so much happier and I’d have such a better time. . I’m more delighted by this point that I’m not getting more slams of “you hate Doctor Who” and/or “why are you hating on Moffat?”, so thank you for this. Really.

I preferred this episode over Asylum. I thought they managed to explain the premise well – I mean, Dinosaurs on a spaceship! Why would that happen? I thought the special effects were great. The dinosaurs were used well and not over used.
Amy and Rory were very good. Rory’s dad was great.
My main criticism is that the story was too short to introduce so many characters, and to that extent I thought the additional companions were wasted. Not that this one should have been a two-parter, but they should have cut back a bit on how much they were trying to introduce.

I think that’s what I take away from it. It really was constricted by the 45 minute window. Moffat’s whole mantra now is to do as much as you can with forty five minutes and that can often lead to feeling slighted despite the “so much”. No one in the story really got a whole lot of play, which is… not what I like. I don’t watch Doctor Who to give me “tastes”. I watch it to give me a story that leaves me satisfied.